The Number
by Ballerina Terminator
Summary: The lives of SHIELD agents are filled with secrets and intrigue. Before long, you start to see it everywhere.


**Dear Readers,**

**Here is story number seven as promised, just in time for my birthday! I like birthday posts. I like giving gifts even if it's only words, and the reviews are like birthday presents. This is a fun story, and I do hope you like it. (And if you like this one, wait until you get to the next one!) I'm afraid that's all I have for today, so enjoy!**

**Ballerina Terminator**

**P.S. This story used to have a epilogue, however, following discussion with my beta-readers, I ultimately decided that it would kind ruin the mood that I'm going for in the over-all story arc. However, I didn't want to get rid of it all together. So, if you would like a copy of it at a later date (once the story has progressed to an appropriate point), just send a private message to me and it's all yours! (Sorry for the complications.)  
**

The Number

Natasha Romanoff was standing in front of an ornate mirror that hung on a wall next to the wide windows that looked down on sparkling city lights, attempting to save her elaborately styled hair, when Clint came into the luxury hotel room.

"Any problems?" he asked, closing the door securely behind him.

"Not really," she said dismissively, still focused on her hair which continued to be uncooperative.

When he stepped further into the extravagant suite, Natasha saw Clint's eyes flicker over to the pudgy, middle-aged man with mussed, thinning hair lying on the floor.

The man on the floor was not a pretty sight. He was dressed in a tux that had become exceedingly rumpled, and he was red-faced and sweating profusely. His hands and feet were tied off, and the corner of a bed sheet was stuffed into his mouth as a gag, muffling his furious yells.

In her peripheral vision, Natasha saw Clint raise his eyes from the prone individual on the floor up where she stood continuing to struggle with her pinned tresses. His amused expression slid from his face to be replaced with an expression equally well known to his partner. When his eyebrows furrowed and his jaw tightened, something was bothering him.

"He ripped your dress?" he questioned.

Natasha gave an irritated glance over her shoulder at the area where one of her long lace sleeves, which started just off her shoulder and ended just past her wrist, had been pulled apart at the seam before she returned her attention back to her hair, glad that his concern was so minor. "Mr. Fallwell was not so pleased when the 'sweet, young thing' whom he had convinced to come up here decided she didn't really want his attentions." She pronounced 'attentions' in a way to make it clear that he had expected more than just a receptive conversationalist.

"Did he?" Clint said icily, as he stepped over the man on the floor. Although Natasha wasn't completely certain, she was willing to bet that when Clint's toe caught in Mr. Fallwell's ribs, it was not an accident. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall next to the mirror and watched her work.

"You didn't have any trouble with his bodyguards down stairs, I take it?" she inquired, as she realized he had gotten to the room a full ten minutes before the specified time.

"He only had the three, and by the end of the fight, I was feeling embarrassed for them. Seriously, after all his ill-gotten gains, you'd think that he could be bothered to hire someone with decent training, like former spec-ops."

"Well, you really limit your options when you have to disqualify anyone who might ask uncomfortable questions like 'What's up with all the under-aged girls that you seem to be shipping into the country?'" After what seemed the hundredth bid to right her hair, Natasha dropped her arms and sighed in frustration. "Damn, I'm just going to cut it all off," she snapped.

"Here," he said, coming to stand next to her. "I can see where you're missing it." He slid the two hair pins from her unresisting fingers, and she took the cue to tilt her head down and to the right to allow him a better view.

She stood quietly as his fingers moved through the loosed curls, and Natasha found herself keenly aware of the subtle movement of warm air on the back of her neck each time he exhaled.

He worked slowly, being careful to avoid pulling her hair too hard or accidently pressing a hair pin into her scalp, but, finally, he finished sliding the last pin into place. "There," he declared. "I'm afraid that it isn't as nice as it was before, but it should stay up."

Natasha let out a breath that she hadn't been aware that she had been holding. "No, it looks fine," Natasha insisted, turning her head to right and then left, inspecting his work in the mirror. "Thank you." She looked back at Clint's mirror image and found his attention had shifted to the tear in her dress at her shoulder. She felt the slight tug of the fabric as he examined the damage done to the garment.

"If you have any thread, I could close up the tear for you," he offered. "You usually bring some, don't you? Hey, it looks like he scratched you when he ripped your dress. Hmm, that's kind of deep; it's starting to bleed just a bit."

Natasha was surprised at the intensity of the shiver that ran through her body in response to the mild sting felt when Clint ran a finger over the abrasions.

"Sorry!" He winced at her unexpected reaction. "We ought to at least clean the scratches now. We can find some anti-biotic cream when we get back to base."

Clint strode off to the bathroom, and, this time, Nat was sure that Clint gave the man on the floor a purposeful kick in the shin. When Clint had disappeared into the bathroom, and she could hear the water running in the sink, Natasha took a deep breath and tried to get her nerves under control. She had been on missions in the past that had left her sense temporarily heightened, but it was very unusual for her to be so keyed up this long after a fight, especially for such a minor skirmish with such a woefully incompetent opponent as Fallwell. Nevertheless, she was feeling inexplicably tense.

By the time Clint returned, Natasha felt that she had regained much of her composure, so when Clint pressed the wash cloth that he had dampened with warm, soapy water to the scratches on her back, she did not so much as flinch.

"The soap is antibacterial, but there was no first aid kit, so I don't have anything to bandage it with," Clint explained as he carefully cleaned the scrapes.

Natasha couldn't help chuckling. "I don't want to appear over overconfident, but considering the relatively minor nature of the injury, I think I'll survive until the time at which I can receive further medical attention," she teased. "It is not exactly walking through the jungle country side with a bullet wound."

"It just grazed you," he said firmly. "You were going to make it worse by panicking."

"If you consider that a bullet had 'just grazed' my leg an inch and a half from my femoral artery, I think that panicking was a perfectly reasonable response."

"Believe me, that was the first thing I checked for at the time, but as soon as I was sure you were in no immediate danger of bleeding out, we really did need to focus on getting out of the line of fire so the next bullet wouldn't have the chance to do any more damage.

"I walked nine miles on that leg," she reminded him, not wanting to dwell on her less than composed reaction at the time of the incident. "With your help, of course." She added the last not wanting to underrate the assistance that he had provided. "At least this won't take nine stitches."

"Not even one," he assured her as he gently patted her back dry with a second towel. "The dress, I'm afraid, will not be so lucky. Do you have something that I can fix that with?"

Natasha reached over to the cream-colored silk clutch sitting on the table near them and extracted a needle and a small spool of pine-colored thread that matched her dress, both which she had brought for just such an emergency.

Sewing was a rarely- recognized skill for SHIELD's field agents, but if you were on a three week long recon mission in the middle of some remote area of the world, you had to pack light. It was then that you really began to appreciate the ability to repair your very limited wardrobe, especially if it was cold out. It became a considerably more important skill if what you were sewing up was either yourself or another field agent.

Clint had no trouble threading the needle and making a start on rejoining the seam with small, neat stitches. It was not by any means master craft work, but unless someone took the time to make a close inspection, it would probably not be noticed.

He worked in silence for a few moments before he began thoughtfully, "You know, as long as Phil doesn't mind, we can go back to the party down stairs for a while. SHIELD did spend $1,000 a ticket getting us into this party in the first place, and we might as well get the money's worth. You ought to wine, dine, and dance as a reward for a job well done."

"Can we?" she asked, unable to mask her delight in the suggestion. In the little time she had spent at the charity ball being held in the hotel, she had very much enjoyed herself despite the mission requiring her to lure Fallwell into taking her back to his room. The food spread had looked tempting, the little champagne she had tasted had been excellent, and, most importantly to her, there had been a small orchestra, playing a diverse selection of music for those who wished to dance, and the one thing that she had not ever been able to successfully conceal, especially from Clint, was her eagerness to seize any opportunity for dancing.

"I don't see why not. We'll ask Coulson if he minds us sticking around as soon as the extraction team arrives for Fallwell here." He gave a jerk of the head toward the prisoner on the floor.

"That sounds fantastic," Natasha agreed wholeheartedly.

There was again a minute of silence before Clint spoke again, this time in a quieter and more hesitant tone. "I wanted to mention it earlier, but I really didn't get a chance because we were a little rushed getting out the door, but you look really nice this evening."

"Clint, is that a less-than-subtle dig at the amount of time that I took getting ready?" she asked suspiciously. He had literally been tapping his foot in the hallway outside her rooms while she prepared. Finally, she grabbed her gear and strapped her knives to her leg in the car while they were on their way. "I did try to hurry, but we only got back from our last assignment at noon!"

"Of course, I'm not making a dig," Clint replied indignantly. "I really mean it! The dress is quite… pretty, and the color matches your eyes. You really do look lovely." Clint finished the statement in a bit of a rush, apparently embarrassed by the vehemence of his defense of the innocence of his earlier comment.

Natasha pressed her lips together in an attempt to suppress a smile and failed miserably. On a whim, she leaned back and raised herself up on her toes so that she could plant a peck on her partner's cheek before returning to her original stance. "Thank you," she said a bit breathlessly. "You look quite dashing yourself this evening."

The startled look on Clint's face made Natasha suddenly doubt her actions, and she could feel a flush of heat rising up her neck and into her cheeks when a knock on the door caught their attention. The door opened, and Agents Annie Russell and Josiah McDaniel came in pushing a luggage trolley with a massive trunk sitting on it.

Clint paused in the sewing job in order to assist them. "Tasha, don't move. I don't want to lose the needle before we're done fixing that tear."

Natasha maintained her position while the others moved the trolley up next to Fallwell.

"We got this," Agent Russell assured her confidently as she slapped an epidural sedative patch on Fallwell's forehead. "What happened to your dress?"

"He did," Natasha muttered darkly.

"Bastard," Annie sighed with a shake of the head. "Human trafficker, pretty dress destroyer… Is here no end to your crimes?" Annie asked the man at her feet who was quickly losing consciousness.

"What's up with the gag?" Josiah asked. "It looks like you stuffed half the bed sheet down his throat. Got a little enthusiastic, did we?"

"I got tired of listening to him. You should have heard him go on after I got him tied down. Sexual slurs, xenophobic slurs, homophobic slurs, _racial_ slurs…"

"Racial slurs?" Josiah asked, perplexed.

"Like what?" Clint asked, equally confused.

"Clint," Natasha gasped, feigning a scandalized tone, as Josiah pointed to her with a grin and mouthed "Russian." Clint hastily swallowed a smile as Natahsa continued, "My father taught me never to repeat such language. Anyway, I don't think he was really tailoring the insults to relate specifically to me so much as he had just run out of all other insults, and it's not like most of the homophobic ones really made a whole lot of sense either. I decided to shut him up before he found new ways to be unpleasant."

After Fallwell had dozed off, Annie pulled the gag out of his mouth and, cringing, carefully deposited the saliva-soaked bed sheet well out of the way. McDaniel opened the trunk and held it steady while Clint and Russell hauled the unconscious Fallwell into the box. Once he was in, Josiah shut the lid on him and slipped a padlock onto the latch in front.

"Well, we'll see you when you get back to base," Annie said with a friendly wave as she and Josiah wheeled the trunk out of the room. "Try to stay out of trouble."

After their fellow agents left, Clint finished repairing the tear in Natasha's dress, and she straightened his tie before they headed out of the room, leaving the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door. With any luck, it would be a couple of days before someone would wonder why they hadn't seen Fallwell around.

When Clint and Natasha entered the glittering ballroom on the ground floor they spotted Agent Phil Coulson sitting at a table near the orchestra, watching the musicians play. As they made their way over to him, Clint plucked a champagne flute off the tray of a passing waiter and passed it to Natasha. Phil stood as they approached, and Natasha took a seat in the chair that he had pulled out for her. Clint took the open seat next to hers.

"Everything went according to plan, I take it?" Phil said, retaking his seat.

"Rookie stuff," Natasha said airily as she took a sip of her champagne. "I'm a little surprised that you didn't use the opportunity to break in a couple of the new recruits."

"We've been trying to find this guy for some time now," Coulson explained. "We couldn't afford to have anything go wrong. For years we thought we were looking at four different organizations. When we discovered that Fallwell's charity groups were the front for human trafficking in all four countries, Fury wanted to put a halt to it as soon as possible. Now that we've taken out the leader, we're going to go in and take out the lower levels with the help of whatever intel we can squeeze out of Fallwell. Next week, the two of you are heading out to the Horn of Africa to work this case from the other side."

"I thought that we were scheduled for South America next week," Clint said.

"That's been postponed until June, if not July. This takes higher priority and Director Fury wants the best agents we have on it. You'll get a full briefing on Monday, along with the agents going to the other countries involved in the case. We're going to be in this one for the long haul, and that reminds me, I was going to ask if you two were interested in sticking around at the party for a while.

Clint grinned. "We were going to ask you the same thing."

"You ought to enjoy yourselves while you still can," Coulson warned. "It will be a while before you get some time off."

"You don't mind sticking around?" Natasha asked, exchanging a quick glance with Clint.

"Not at all," Phil assured her.

This was all the encouragement that Natasha needed. She took another sip of the champagne before taking Clint by the hand and nearly dragging him to his feet as the orchestra began a new number. Clint accompanied her with a bemused smile to the crowded dance floor. Clint pulled her close, carefully placing his hand on her back in such a way as to avoid putting pressure on the scratches, and even before they took their first step in time with the music, Natasha let her iron-hard self-control slacken. By the time Clint led her into a spin, her long skirt swirling around her ankles, she felt completely at ease.

It was after the fourth consecutive song, just as the orchestra announced a break and recorded music took their place, when Natasha finally admitted to the need to stop long enough to catch her breath and grab a glass of water, much to Clint's obvious relief. The stepped off the dance floor and found an open spot at the bar where the each took a glass of water before heading back across to the other side of the room to the table where they had left Phil. Due to the crush of people moving around the tables and due to her relative lack of height, Natasha had not yet caught sight of the table when she felt Clint's arm slip around her waist and pull her off to the right. She looked up at him questioningly. He didn't answer immediately but merely jerked his head in the direction he was trying to guide her, and she followed him to an empty table in a remote corner of the room.

"What's up?" she asked as they sat down with their drinks.

"Coulson was speaking to a woman at the table, and I didn't want to interrupt in case it was important."

"Really?" Natasha turned her head back, trying to catch a glance of the table, but there were still too many people milling about for her to see. "Do you think he had a contact to meet and didn't tell us?"

"I don't know," Clint confessed as he placed his glass, empty but for the ice, back down on the table. "I was a bit surprised that he wanted to stay; I thought he might just be asking in case we wanted to stay, but if he had to meet a contact and didn't want to say anything…"

"But what would he have done if we didn't want to stick around?"

"Nat, I hate to tell you this, but the fact that you really enjoy dancing is probably the worst-kept secret in all of SHIELD. It was not much of a gamble."

"Still, it's not unreasonable to believe that we might have noticed," Natasha said, somewhat abashed.

"He could still tell us that it was need-to-know and that we don't need to know."

"What did she look like?"

"Slender black woman, short curly hair, probably early to mid-thirties, hard to tell about her height as she was sitting down, but I would say a few inches taller than you and one or two inches shorter than Coulson," Clint rattled off. "Come on. I think we can get a better view from the dance floor."

They abandoned their empty glasses at the table and returned to the dance floor which was indeed slightly raised. They joined in on a waltz which, due to the positioning of the head which one turned fully to one's left, was most advantageous dance one was trying to observe one's surroundings. Clint guided them around the dance floor in such a way as to allow them the best view of Phil and his new companion.

"Can you see them?" Clint asked as he spun her around.

"Just barely," she confessed as she caught a glance of the woman that Clint had described. "Your eyesight, as always, is far superior. Can you tell me what they are doing?" In defiance of dancing etiquette, Natasha took over leading while Clint peered over at the subjects of interest.

"Just talking, as far as I can tell," Clint informed her. "Although they appear to be very congenial, I would say they both look a bit… not so much nervous as tense."

"I don't know if Coulson has ever been really nervous in his life," Natasha said. "Or I should say, he's never actually shown it when he is."

"It's hard to picture," Clint agreed. He gave her a few more twirls around as the song ended. "They're still talking, so would you like to continue dancing?"

"I'm surprised that you even bothered to ask, considering that it is apparently universal knowledge that I can't stand to turn it down," she grumbled.

Clint smirked. "Is that a 'no'?"

"Of course not," she admitted, closing the gap between them as the music started with again.

"So, what do you suppose they're talking about?" Clint asked, as once again they slid across the floor in a rather more sedate tempo.

"Maybe it has something to do with tonight's op," she suggested. "They are apparently moving forward with the whole case very quickly."

"Most likely, but I would have figured that he would have told us about the meeting if it related to a mission that we were assigned to. Coulson has always felt that it was better if his agents were as well informed as possible about everything relating to the assignment. It may be for an op that we're not involved in. We aren't the only agents under his command, after all," Clint pointed out as leaned her back into a dip. "It only seems like we are because, naturally, we're his favorites."

"We're certainly the ones who get worked the hardest. We should be the favorites," Natasha agreed. "Perhaps the meeting wasn't planned, and she's making emergency contact."

"Well, if that's true then it's probably only a matter of time before Coulson appears out of nowhere with instructions, however, in my opinion, they seem a little too relaxed for this to be an emergency," Clint said, glancing over at the table again. "Oh, hold up. Phil is writing on something, looks like a square of paper, maybe a thin packet, white with red printing. I don't recognize it, but she's slipped it into her purse."

"I see it," Natasha said, keeping her eyes on it as she turned under his arm. "Is she getting up?"

"Yes," Clint said as they turned so that he could see. "Give me a minute; I think she's heading towards the doors near the back wall. Do you know what's back there?"

It only took Natasha a few seconds to review the floor plans of the hotel in her mind before she came up with the answer. "Ah, yes. I know where she's probably going."

"Oh?"

"Women's restrooms. My dear Clint, though you are a lovely dancing partner, I am afraid that I will have to excuse myself for just a few minutes. Apparently, I need to go powder my nose."

"You're following an unknown potential operative into an enclosed space?" he chided.

"Clint, I'm going to the restroom. Relax, I'll only be a minute." She gave his hand a squeeze before letting go and following Coulson's companion out the doors at the back of the room.

The women's restroom was less than ten yards down the hall, and Natasha was just in time to see the door fall shut behind the last person who had entered. She traversed the hallway, pulled the heavy door open, and slipped inside after the last person. Just like the rest of the hotel, the restrooms were impressively lavish. The room was filled with soft lighting, a small sitting area had chairs and sofas, and the counter was made of pink granite. When Natasha had entered, there was no one in sight, but she could hear at least two women in the stalls. After a moment of thought, she chose a seat on one of the sofas, removed her left heel, and began to rub her foot as though trying to relax after a long night of dancing.

The first person to leave the stall was an elderly woman, and, and like Natasha, she was in formal dress. When she finished washing her hands, she began to leave, but she paused when she saw Natasha, and smiled kindly at her.

"Hard to be on your feet all night even when you're young, isn't it, dear? I saw you and your young man dancing earlier. You are very good!"

Natasha returned the smile, and thanked the lady as she left. After another minute, Natasha decided to switch feet. She had only just starting rubbing her right foot when another stall opened and the young woman that Phil had been talking to stepped out and approached the sink, setting her purse on the counter beside her. Natasha slipped her heeled shoe back on her foot, and took up her spot at the sink immediately to the woman's right. As Natasha began to wash and then rinse her hands it what appeared to be a great hurry, her elbow caught the purse on the counter, knocking it to the ground in such a way as to spill its contents all over the floor.

"Oh, my goodness," Natasha exclaimed, hastily drying her hands on one of the cloth hand towels before kneeling down to help collect the scattered objects on the floor. "I am so sorry. That was terribly clumsy of me."

"Oh, that's all right." The woman was only seconds behind Natasha in kneeling down to collect the items on the ground. "No harm done."

Natasha caught sight of the red and white paper that Clint had seen and picked it up. It was a thin package, about four inches square. She flipped it over, she saw in Phil's careful handwriting a time, a date, a street address with the name of an Italian restraint beside it, and Phil's name with a phone number. She instantly realized how wrong she and Clint had been about what had really been going on.

"This is yours too?" Natasha asked, holding out the package to her.

"Oh, yes, I need that!" She took the package from Natasha's outstretched hand. "It has extra strings for my instrument."

"Instrument?"

"Yes, I'm with the orchestra. I have them in case one of my cello strings breaks. Actually, I'd better start getting back. This was only a fifteen minute break, and I don't want to be late."

"Of course," Natasha said, standing up with the cellist. She glanced around to make sure nothing had been missed, and apologized again for knocking over the purse before she found herself alone in the restroom.

When she rejoined Clint a few minutes later, without saying a word she took his hand and back to the dance floor just in time to hear the orchestra play the opening strains of the Moonlight Sonata. They swayed slowly in time with the music for a few minutes before Clint broke the silence.

"So, what happened?"

"What happened? We were idiots. That's what happened. We failed to think of the most obvious conclusion."

"Which was?"

"Phil sees a girl he thinks is pretty - who is, in fact, very pretty, and he asks her out on a date."

"Really? How do you know?"

"I saw what he wrote down."

"Which was?"

"Time and a place to meet along with his phone number."

"That doesn't necessarily mean a date considering our occupation," Clint pointed out.

"It was a really nice restaurant, and he gave her his _personal_ number."

Clint chuckled and shook his head. "You're right. We're idiots."

Later, as they waited for the valet to pull their car around, Natasha turned to Phil.

"Pretty girl you were talking to," she mentioned with complete nonchalance. "We saw you with her a couple of times this evening."

"I suppose you mean Georgia," he said.

"Played the cello in the orchestra?" Clint mentioned casually.

"Yes, she just moved here from Portland," Phil said.

"Trying to make her feel welcome in the east coast?" Natasha asked innocently.

"I did ask her out, if that's what you're asking," Phil said. "Although, I imagine the two of you already figured that out. You two are not as subtle as you think you are, you know."

"Nothing gets by you, does it?" Clint opined.

"At least not yet."


End file.
